At the 2016 OFC Conference, Inphi announced its ColorZ technology, which delivers 100Gb/s, 100GHz, fixed dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) in a 4.5 watt, QSFP28 pluggable package. Commensurate with that announcement was a public declaration by Microsoft1 that they intended to augment its existing DCI toolkit, utilizing ColorZ technology to interconnect sub-80km metro-distributed data centers while continuing to use coherent DWDM technology for longer distances. The figure maps ColorZ and the other DCI optical transmission technologies to their respective distances.

As the 2017 OFC Conference approaches, Microsoft has concluded months of live field trials with the ColorZ technology and is preparing for commercial deployment in multiple cities.

In this analysis and report we answer two major questions:

1. What are the economic advantages of deploying ColorZ technology to interconnect sub 80 km hyperscale data centers such as Microsoft?

2. Can smaller, emerging data center providers expect to see similar economic advantages to hyperscale providers if they utilize ColorZ technology in their sub 80 km data center interconnections?